While flight cancellations due to weather are nothing new, the fallout from snow snafus is more pronounced than ever.

As WSJ’s Scott McCartney explains in The Middle Seat column, airlines are now quicker to cancel flights over bad weather and rebooking is difficult because airlines are running at capacity. McCartney looks at what airports are doing to help when they become hotels of last resort for stranded passengers, including Greater New York’s airports:

At many airports, paramedics are on call for medical care; parking-lot buses are deployed to move people between terminals or to hotels. Among the amenities big airports now routinely stock: cots, blankets, diapers, baby formula, eye masks, prepaid phone cards, ear plugs, deodorant and shampoo. For the second big snowstorm in New York this winter, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey started handing out free WiFi cards to stranded customers at New York City’s three major airports so travelers could check their flight status online at airline websites.

But perchance to sleep? At New York’s LaGuardia Airport, people stranded in the US Airways and Delta terminals are invited to ride buses to the central terminal, where a sleeping area is set up with cots and security guards. DFW establishes quiet zones for cots where music and paging announcements are muted and lights are dimmed.

And when ash clouds shut down European skies last spring, the Port Authority bused Newark stranded passengers to showers in “snow dorms” built for plow drivers and trucked in portable showers for passengers marooned at Kennedy International Airport.

“It’s not the same as staying at the Waldorf. But people were so grateful after three or four days of washing in a bathroom sink,” said Susan Baer, Port Authority aviation director.